Introduction | Ethanol Production | Cellulosic Ethanol | E85 Fuel | Ethanol Quiz |

Did You Know?

That Canadian companies are leading the way in cellulose ethanol research and production - check out Iogen Corporation at their website.

That hydrogen fuel is already used in rockets? - Learn about how hydrogen fuel cells work here.

Can We Improve Ethanol?

Although ethanol is ethanol regardless of where it came from, we can obtain huge benefits by finding new sources of sugars to use for ethanol.  In this section we give an overview of new advances in the production of ethanol using cellulose.

Up to now we have discussed using the starches inside seeds to create ethanol, which may make some wonder why we cannot use the sugars in leaves and other green plants to produce ethanol as well.  Sugars inside the green parts of plants are stored as long chains called 'cellulose', while sugars stored in plant seeds or fruits are in long chains called 'starches'.   What is the difference? Cellulose is a chain of glucose molecules just like starch, but in cellulose every other glucose molecule is inverted, while in starch they all are oriented the same.  If you are not clear, visit the University of Southern Mississippi's Department of Polymer Science website here for an excellent diagram showing the main differences.

What difference does this make for ethanol? Well, if we could convert cellulose to sugar then it would make ethanol more economical since currently huge amounts of green plants are currently disposed of as waste.  For example, farmers harvest the corn cobs off the plant and then bury the rest.  But if cellulose ethanol becomes a reality, we could harvest the corn for food, and then the plant itself could be converted into fuels.  As shown in the diagram below, the corn cob husks, the leaves and even the stalks could all be converted into cellulose ethanol [9]. In fact, anywhere cellulose can be found could be a source of cheap, renewable fuel [9].

Unlike the ethanol previously described, cellulosic ethanol is made from the leaves of a corn plant

If cellulose ethanol is so convenient, why isn't it used more? Unfortunately cellulose ethanol technology is still considered to be in its infancy.  Breaking cellulose down into sugars is expensive and difficult to accomplish.  Even the human body is unable to perform this task!  But researchers have high hopes that with time cellulose ethanol will become both feasible and economical [10].

So that settles it right? Lets just start filling our cars up on 100% cellulose ethanol and traveling in an environmentally friendly manner.  Unfortunately making the switch from gasoline to ethanol has proven a little tricky.  Lets examine this in more detail...